Short is equivalent to an elevator pitch—no more than approximately 150 words or about 75 seconds. (Research indicates that, when you tell a short, informative story to an executive online, their attention span maxes out at 75 seconds.181)

If I think of a story as something that has to convey a certain message, as a train that has to pull into a certain station at a certain time, and myself as the stressed-out engineer trying to make that happen—it’s too much. I freeze up and no fun is had.